Glossary Term – Organization

Established in seventeenth-century England, the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, was a Christian Protesant sect. Persecuted in both England and early colonial America, Quakers found a home in William Penn’s Pennsylvania, which supported Quaker adherance to pacificism, religious tolerance, and the equality of men and women. Quakers were also instrumental leaders of the abolitionist movement in colonial America and the founding era.

Glossary Term – Person

Anthony Benezet (1713–1784) was an anti-slavery advocate and Quaker educator who taught free blacks in Philadelphia. As an ardent abolitionist, Benezet wrote and published anti-slavery pamphlets and encouraged his fellow Quakers to ban slavery from their community.

Glossary Term – Person

As a child, William Penn (1644–1718) became deeply interested in religionand he emerged as a religious rebel when he entered Oxford University. Penn’s quest for spiritual peace led him to attend Quaker meetings, even though the government considered this a crime.Convinced that religious toleration could not be achieved in England, Penn received a charter from King Charles II to establish an American colony—Pennsylvania. His “First Frame of Government” provided for secure private property, virtually unlimited free...

Glossary Term – Person

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was the English-born son of a Quaker who launched his career as a radical in 1772. He was dismissed from his job as an excise officer in England in 1772 for leading an agitation for higher pay. Two years later he emigrated to America. Paine was a vehement supporter of the patriot cause and his Common Sense (1776) and sixteen-part series The Crisis (1776–1783) made him one of America’s leading pamphleteers. In 1787 Paine returned to England, where...

Primary Source

Quaker schoolteacher Josiah Forster first published this broadside, Christian Discipline: Or Certain Good and Wholesome Orders for the Well-Governing of My Family, in 1751, thirty years after the death of its author, William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania.

Primary Source

“Injured Humanity” was intended to shock readers and called on the conscience of citizens to “reject, with horror, the smallest participation in such infernal transactions.” This broadside was printed in New York City by Samuel Wood, a prolific Quaker-reformist printer.